Federal money underpins airport upgrade

Fri 14 Jun 2013, 11:20 AM AEST

A $2 million dollar federal grant has locked-in a major upgrade of the Kempsey Airport.

The Kempsey Shire Council has produced a concept plan for the future of the Kempsey Airport and consulted extensively with businesses from Sydney to the Gold Coast to develop a business case for the project.

The Lyne MP Rob Oakeshott says that groundwork helped convince the Federal Government that that project will generate significant economic benefits for the entire mid north coast region.

The Government has agreed to spend $2 million on the airport upgrade with construction expected to start later this year.

The project involves the construction of civil infrastructure required for hangar sites suitable for general aviation business activities, including roads, taxiways, power and telecommunications.

The Kempsey council general manager said the airport is designed at jobs creation not re-opening the facility to commercial flights.

David Rawlings said the federal grant of $2 million and council funding of $500,000 will be used to develop an aviation business park.

He said it would take a much larger investment to resume commercial flights out of Kempsey, but the new business park will help the local economy.

"We've done this as a group of councils working together," he said.

"We realise that the best way to get the result is for Port Macquarie to focus on the carriers and we focus on other aspects like the economic development trade.

"If we all go trying to compete for the same part of the market I don't think we're going to get a really good outcome because we're just going to cross over each other."